IRON MAIDEN Frontman On Touring, Flying, War And Religion

icWales recently conducted an interview with IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: There's a lot of variety on the new album? With two studio albums recorded with this line-up, did you feel it was time to take a chance?

Bruce: Well, we had a go at that on the last record and I think we were thinking about it a bit more on the last record, whereas on this album it was all very instinctive, it all happened very naturally and very quickly. The last album took a long time to record, and this one was very quick, very live, so that gives me a good clue that we're doing the right thing. And of course the thing just sounds fantastic anyway, it's a really heavy record, so it was relatively effortless, like putting your foot down when you've got a really big engine in the car — it just goes, you know?

Q: The main themes of the album seem to be war and religion.

Bruce: Well, it's real life as it surrounds us. When I was a kid, it was all about the Cold War and the four-minute warning, and we were all going to get dissolved into some radioactive cinder at the drop of a hat, and then the Berlin Wall came down and we all went, "Ah, there you go, there's only AIDS now then, that's the only thing that's going to get us." There's a few other things now — terrorists, fundamentalists and dirty bombs and droughts and global warming and bird flu and God knows what — so there's a whole bunch of like mini-apocalypses out there, you know, waiting to come and get you. We are a kind of blokey sort of a band, I mean we're not like an emo band — we're not like new men and all that kind of stuff. We're blokes — wars and battles and struggles and things like that, strikes a chord you know? We have kids and things, so you sit there and think, "Well what kind of a world are our kids going to grow up in?” So I think, it touches all the bases really. War and religion.

Q: In your other job as an airline pilot, you must fly to lots of different places which probably makes you reflect on the nature of war.

Bruce: I've been in one or two war zones, not necessarily with the airline. Years ago I ended up in Bosnia in the middle of the war in Sarajevo, that was a very sobering experience. That left a permanent impression on me. In one or two of the African countries we fly to I've seen the after effects of wars. Civil wars and things like and they're pretty vile actually. You can't believe the depths of barbarity that people will stoop to, particularly with respect to children. But the other thing is the way people bounce back. It's the way they survive and live and continue — that's the other remarkable thing. So you know there's always some kernel of hope within all this carnage.

Q: How do you reconcile your twin careers as an airline pilot and singer in IRON MAIDEN?

Bruce: Oh well when I'm an airline pilot, I'm an airline pilot and I do everything I need to do on my days off. Book some holiday. It's great on your holiday to do an IRON MAIDEN record. It's cool. What did you do on your holiday? Oh I made an IRON MAIDEN record you know. Great. Obviously when we go on tour you know the band's the thing.

Q: In a lot of places IRON MAIDEN are bigger now than ever . You must be very pleased.

Bruce: Yeah I can't recall ever doing two Earls Courts with IRON MAIDEN at any point in our career, in addition to doing all these other places as well. So it's enormous. I mean, don't forget we got a gold record in England for the last album, which did well over 100,000 copies. You know we haven't been doing those sorts of album sales for 10 or 15 years in the U.K. So it's doing pretty good.